


Prospero

by ekbe_vile



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Abuse, First Time, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-11 04:45:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3314465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ekbe_vile/pseuds/ekbe_vile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethan doesn't hate Victor, yet, but he will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“And she will love me?”

It is a struggle not to roll his eyes – Victor doesn’t look up from his work, too tired to school his own face. “She will know only what you teach her,” he tells the creature – _Caliban_ , it had called itself. “Show her love, and she will love you in return.”

Caliban makes a soft sound, the closest approximation to joy he knows. His breath is sour on the back of Victor’s neck, chilled, the breath of a thing neither living nor dead; not an abomination of nature, but of Victor’s own making.

“Stand back, please.” His tongue cracks the command in his mouth like a whip. “I can’t concentrate with you hovering.”

He can imagine the creature’s face – sad, pathetic thing that doesn’t know if it should break its creator’s neck, or drop to its knees and lick at his heels. Caliban hates Victor and adores him, one moment for the agony of life, the next for its bliss.

Victor’s own feelings for the creature are not so divided. It would have been kindness, had he put a bullet in its head. A clean end for them both. But Victor’s eyes still burn with tears shed for his Proteus, for Professor Van Helsing, for himself. “You have the soul of a poet,” Sir Malcolm had said, and now it screams for a revenge to rival Shakespeare’s Andronicus.

He sets aside his scalpel and leans back to properly examine the incision he has made between Miss Croft’s breasts. Her skin is grey, her blood tacky from the chill of the ice. He will have to crack her sternum to reach her lungs, but he will keep her as whole as possible. He will remake her as she was that day on the docks, when Proteus spoke of the fairy lights, and she had smiled kindly.

And Caliban will love her. How could he not? He will put words into her mouth, teach her to love and to hate as he does. She will know nothing but him, until the day he leads her out into the world, to show her _everything_. “Dog?” she will say, and Caliban will answer, “Yes, dog.” “Warm?” she will ask, hands held over an open flame, and Caliban will pull her away before she can burn herself. They will eat chestnuts, and her eyes will sparkle with joy as she looks up and sees the fairy lights.

Caliban will love her thus, earnestly, until one day she sees a man in the street. He will be tall, and wearing a brown homburg, and speak in the way of Americans, like a wide, muddy river.

And then, Brona Croft will remember Ethan Chandler, and she will love Caliban no more.

Yes, Victor believes in Fate.

A noise from the flat below. Victor moves to the stairs without thinking, grabs his gun first, and then a light.

Another crash – a table and its settings knocked over in the near-dark before dawn.

Victor chambers a bullet. “Stay here,” he says. “Don’t make a sound.”

Caliban keeps his silence and bleeds back into the shadows.

*

He finds Ethan crouched in the corner, arms wrapped around his body, nails pulling deep at the seams of his coat. The door’s ajar, the table overturned, and Ethan, his face pressed to the cold plaster of the wall, knows none of it.

Victor first closes the false wardrobe, blocking the draft that pours down from the attic. “You might have knocked,” he says, alerts Ethan to his presence while there is still some distance between them. The door to his flat has been forced, the bolt broken from the wooden frame. Victor shoulders it closed, thankful, inexplicably, that the damage is not worse.

In the corner, Ethan twitches at the sound of Victor’s voice. He whines, low and animal and afraid, and pushes his body closer to the wall.

Victor feels the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He can see, now, the blood on Ethan’s hands - great smears of it across his coat and matted in his hair. More than split knuckles from a brawl; more savage than a knife in an alley. “Ethan?” He moves closer, the weight of the gun in his hand lending him courage.

“Doctor.” Ethan’s voice cracks on the word, like his vocal cords have been grated raw. _“Please.”_

That’s all he gets out, but Victor recognizes the tone, not so different from the last time Ethan sought his aid. He doesn’t try to right the table - it’s oak, too heavy for him to move on his own - and his medical bag is lost somewhere amidst the scattered books and debris on the floor. He knows already, a lead weight in his stomach, that the blood does not belong to Ethan. 

“Did anyone see you?”

A beat - Ethan drops his chin, face bowed - shakes his head, no.

It’s a small mercy, but it doesn’t mean someone won’t be looking for Ethan - namely, the police, although Victor cannot attest to the range of Ethan’s social circle. He watches the floor as he crosses the room, mindful of his books, keeping an eye out for his bag. “Are you hurt?” He grasps Ethan’s shoulder, startles when the larger man leans back into the touch.

And then Ethan turns, all but throwing himself at Victor, arms around his waist and face pressed to his belly. A sob shakes him even as the weight and desperation of his embrace drags Victor to the ground.

A jolt of pain shoots through his tailbone as he hits the floor - another across his back, heavy as the memory of his father’s belt, as Ethan pins him, lays his own long, powerful body over Victor’s so they are face to face.

Every muscle in Victor’s body goes tense in resistance, as tight as his finger on the trigger of his gun, the gun Ethan gave him, lethal, ready to fight, ready to destroy. Ethan’s dark eyes are wrong, almost yellow, the whites shot through with blood. His eyes are animal, as is his pain, and when he turns his face into the curve of Victor’s neck, Victor half expects him to tear out his throat.

And there are teeth, sharp and cutting, but there are lips, too - pressing, pulling, sucking, bruising as they work higher under Victor’s jaw. Ethan’s moustache tickles, his breath is hot, and for a moment all Victor can think is how different it is from the time that Caliban wrapped a bloody hand around his throat.

Victor cocks the hammer on his gun. The CLICK echoes in the strange cavern of his rooms.

Ethan freezes, knows that sound perhaps better than any other, knows the cold bite of the barrel stuck between his ribs.

But Victor doesn’t pull the trigger. He waits, watches as the yellow in Ethan’s eyes fades to white and his pupils contract. Victor is naked under Ethan’s stare - a cadaver in an operating theater, skin peeled back to bare muscle, tendons, bone. He sucks in a breath, realizes too late that it’s not enough. He sees his own body reflected in Ethan’s dark eyes, laid out, cut open and dissected but _alive_ and _conscious_ , paralyzed for vivisection.

And then Ethan is pulling away, lifting the weight of fists and hips that held Victor helpless on the floor. Victor notices first the absence, the cold, and he feels inexplicably abandoned as Ethan inches away from him, back into the corner.

Somehow Victor manages to push himself to his feet, instinct driving his body while memories spark across his brain. He stands above Ethan, now, his gun aimed, his finger easy on the trigger, _like touching a lady’s neck…_

“I’m sorry,” Ethan says, his face turned away again. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

The gun is steady in Victor’s grasp, the grip warmed by his palm, a part of him. He watches Ethan with a new interest, not entirely clinical - watches as the animal twitches and strains beneath his skin, snarling, howling for release.

Victor has never see Ethan lose control, not like this, and he remembers every time he poked and prodded like a child with a stick, trying to provoke Ethan’s temper for no reason other than to prove his own superiority, to secure his rank in the ever-shifting hierarchy of power in the company of Sir Malcolm Murray. He may not have Ethan’s physical strength, or the deadly accuracy of a sharpshooter’s eyes, but he has his wits and a tongue as sharp as a scalpel. Perhaps he can’t hit a target, but he can dissect it in his mind, find its weaknesses, understand how it works, so that when the time comes he won’t just shoot the bloody thing, he will unmake it.

The sour taste of his own arrogance rises with the bile in the back of his throat. As Ethan is violence of form, so Victor is violence of mind. It’s not the gun in his hand that makes him dangerous.

“Will anyone be looking for you?” he asks. “The police or...whoever’s blood you wear?”

Ethan clenches his jaw. “Ain’t nobody left to say it was me.” He breathes deep, turns to look past the gun to Victor’s eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you, Doc, but this thing I become…”

Victor’s mind goes to Caliban, vigilant beside the body that was Brona Croft - holding her hand, stroking her hair with his pale, bloated fingers. He remembers those fingers locked around his own throat, bloody, crushing - remembers the smack of the creature’s hand upon his face as he smeared it with still-steaming viscera. Remembers the alley where his own creation had called itself master; another where it snapped Van Helsing’s neck.

And he remembers, now, Ethan’s mouth, his teeth, his searching lips - remembers the heat of his breath, the weight of his body, feels the ache of bruises already forming on his skin.

Victor lowers the gun, takes his finger from the trigger and lets the hammer return to rest. “You won’t hurt me,” he says as he sets the gun down upon a shelf. “I know something of monsters, now, and you are not one.”

Ethan is shaking, still on the ground, backed into his corner and staring at Victor with a gloss of blindness over his eyes. Victor has seen it before, in others - knows they see him as a child, naive, untested. But then the blindness passes, and Ethan looks at him wide-eyed, and sees.

Victor reaches a hand out to him. “Please, Mr. Chandler. Let me see to your wounds.”

Ethan exhales like every breath is an agony, but he accepts the offered hand, and allows Victor to pull him to his feet.

He leads Ethan to the bedroom - scarcely more than a closet, the hollow peak of a gambrel with a window that doesn’t entirely block the bite of a winter’s wind. The bed came with the rooms, low and narrow and shoved beneath that wretched window. Victor had tried to move it, at first, but the space was such that he could only angle the bed a few degrees in either direction. So it stayed, and Victor actively shunned it, preferring the cot in his lab when he can even sleep at all.

Now Ethan stands above it, stares down at the blankets neatly draped and folded around the edges, his head bowed though even he is not tall enough to brush the ceiling. Victor hesitates, heart suddenly dropping to the pit of his stomach, as he realizes what he’s done, bringing Ethan here.

But he pushes forward, asks, “May I?” and waits for Ethan’s nod before reaching to slide the grey trenchcoat from his shoulders. He drapes it over the back of the room’s only chair, sees the blood but no obvious tears, and when he looks back to Ethan he knows, somehow, there are no wounds to mend beneath his waistcoat.

Still he works the buttons free, wool warm beneath his fingers, softened with age and shaped to Ethan’s form.

Then Ethan’s hand is on Victor’s chest, fingers clenched in the cotton weave of his shirt, pushing hard - not as though he means to push away, but to push inside. Victor holds still to the best of his ability, muscles tight and aching with the effort as Ethan’s other hand moves to his throat, then his face - cupping Victor’s jaw as he draws his thumb across the doctor’s lips.

Ethan’s wounds cannot be cleaned with iodine, they cannot be closed with stitches. Victor’s lips part when he exhales, and Ethan’s thumb presses between them.

For all of the danger Victor at first sensed in him, when Ethan kisses him it is with marked tenderness. Victor closes his eyes and opens to Ethan’s mouth, to the softness of him, the wetness and the warmth and the bristle of his whiskers. Victor closes his eyes and when he opens them again Ethan’s fingers are combing through his hair and cradling his head and he hasn’t felt this safe since he was a child, when he first learned of pain and death.

“Is this all right?” Ethan mumbles against his lips, and Victor’s nodding and grasping at Ethan’s shoulders and kissing back because suddenly he’s forgotten how else to say yes. Ethan seems to understand his answer, at least, which is a relief unto itself, because warmth is just beginning to pool between Victor’s legs and it’s been so long since he felt that little ball of pleasure in his belly he’s forgotten what it’s like, how good desire can be.

Ethan wraps Victor in his arms, slides his hands down Victor’s back until they settle, naturally, to cup his behind. The touch is strange and exhilarating in its newness, the weight of Ethan’s hands on his ass enough to make Victor moan and rub shamelessly up against the larger man.

Ethan growls, and then he’s turning Victor and pushing him back onto the bed. He seems titanic, standing over Victor like that - broad and brutal and still bloody. Victor shivers, the minute trembling in his muscles beyond his control. He feels small, childish, naive - he has seen more than most in his short years, and read more, yet of this he knows nothing. 

Because it is not poetry when Ethan kneels between his legs and pins him to the mattress with a rolling thrust of his hips, and it is not horror when he drags his teeth down Victor’s neck and into the curve of his shoulder. Ethan’s mouth is hot and bruising and obscene, but his hands are careful, searching - Victor wants nothing more, now, than to give Ethan everything he seeks.

Somewhere, he finds the will to move his own hands - to let his fingertips spider walk from Ethan’s shoulders, down his sides to the hem of his shirt. When he was a boy, he would draw birds and trees in the morning condensation on the window pane. Now he draws the muscles and bones under Ethan’s skin.

The bed creaks as Ethan rolls his hips again, hard enough to knock the bed frame against the cold plaster wall. “Fuck,” he rasps into Victor’s ear, then he’s pulling away - sitting back on his heels and shrugging out of his shirt and suspenders.

There’s a concave curve to his belly, a dark thatch of hair leading downwards from his navel. Victor wasn’t expecting Michelangelo’s David, but Ethan’s leanness startles him. He has the look of a starved animal, lungs heaving against too-sharp ribs, eyes glazed and tongue lolling as he turns his head to taste blood on the air.

Then he’s on top of Victor, again, clawing at the buttons on his waist coat, ripping the seams of his shirt. A voice in the back of Victor’s head protests such treatment, but his cock is hardening between his legs and he’s lifting his hips to help as Ethan tugs off his trousers. There is something sublime in the viciousness of Ethan’s nails scraping over his chest, hard enough to raise stinging pink welts, but not to draw blood - something that makes Victor close his eyes and retreat into the colors of his mind where every sensation is vibrant and beautiful.

“Beautiful,” Ethan echoes his thoughts, his hand working now between Victor’s legs, pulling and stroking his cock, circling and probing the puckered muscles further back. 

And for once, Victor _feels_ beautiful, wild and radiant as a pagan madonna - he throws his head back, offering his throat, and Ethan groans.

“Gonna dirty you up, Doc,” he says, grabbing fistfuls of Victor’s head and yanking him up for a kiss. “Gonna fuck you.”

 _“Yes.”_ Victor doesn’t recognize his own voice, this wanton sound that frees itself from somewhere deep in his chest. His teeth are chattering. “Please, Ethan - “

“Do you have any grease?” Ethan’s fighting to get the words out, fighting to stay in control - he shakes his head like he’s trying to shake off the smell of Victor’s need. “Or a salve?”

“Nightstand,” Victor says, and they’re both fumbling at the drawer beside the bed, searching by touch alone until Victor finds the little jar of buttery cream and presses it into Ethan’s hand.

“Why, Doctor!” Ethan gasps, pretending scandal, and for a moment, he sounds like himself, like the American rake.

“As though you don’t own such a thing yourself,” Victor spits, but his indignance only earns him a huff of laughter.

He can’t take his eyes from Ethan’s fingers, thick and callused as they dip into the jar. Victor blinks, only that, and then they are between his legs and circling his hole, slippery and warm. So the gods once possessed mortals, Victor thinks, though it feels low and profane when Ethan pushes the first finger inside.

Victor sucks in a breath and holds it, teeth clenched tight against something that is not pain, but he knows better than to call pleasure. “Knees up,” Ethan coaxes, gripping the back of one thigh and pushing until Victor’s leg is folded against his chest. The stretch impales him deeper, and he groans - feels it now intensely, how easily Ethan can bend and break his body.

He drags his other leg up, grabs his knee to hold it to his chest - he opens wide for Ethan, who curses softly and adds a second finger. “Yeah, like that,” he says - surges forward to kiss and nip at the skin under Victor’s jaw. “So good, darling,” he’s saying, twisting his fingers, digging deeper, and Victor closes his eyes and tries to focus on his own breathing. “Being so good for me.”

Victor’s muscles are weak, trembling with the effort of holding still. Ethan strokes him from hip to knee and down again, shushing him when he whimpers, raising goosebumps across his skin. He feels sick, hot and cold like a fever, turning his face to gasp and pant into the pillow. “Ethan,” he starts, but gets no further - is whining and arching and letting his legs fall open on their own.

“That’s it,” Ethan growls, and there’s a third finger, and they are all twisting and curling and working so deep Victor can almost feel them through the muscles of his abdomen. And there’s a new hunger in Ethan’s motions, a savagery behind the soft praise whispered in Victor’s ear, like Ethan means to tear him apart.

He’s too in his head, thoughts lightning bright, too far gone, now, to understand what it means when Ethan hums and withdraws his fingers. Victor grabs at his shoulders, suddenly desperate to keep the other man from pulling away, not fully realizing, yet, why he must.

“Stay with me, Doctor,” Ethan says and gives his own cock an eager pull.

“I’m here,” Victor snaps, biting down on the words. It was Ethan who came to him, bloodied and lost - it is Ethan who has taken shelter in his flat, in his bed, and yet he’s tossing a feral grin down at Victor, laughing as he bumps his cock against Victor’s hole, closing his eyes when he at last pushes past the rim.

He’s _there_ , in the animal smell of Ethan’s body, the weight that bears down, the heat he breathes into Victor’s mouth. And instead it’s Victor who’s lost - vision swimming, ears ringing, every sense pointed and bristling toward the place where their bodies join. “Hurts,” he gasps, only half conscious of the word, unable to otherwise articulate the stretch of muscle, familiar but _wrong_.

“I know,” Ethan says, pulling back only to thrust forward again, harder. “Gets better. Just keep breathing.”

Ethan’s weight on his chest is crushing, making him gasp, struggling to draw air into his lungs. Victor drops his legs, knees clenched around Ethan’s sides, heels digging in above his kidneys. 

The noise that escapes Ethan’s throat is all fury. He pulls out and flips Victor onto his front, fingers knotting in Victor’s hair, holding him down.

Victor gets his knees under him, pushes his hips up and utters a wordless cry when Ethan slams back inside. A kiss of fire on the back of his neck, teeth breaking skin, locked in muscle and tendon and Victor screams when he tries to turn his head and Ethan refuses him.

He mounts Victor like a dog, bent over the smaller man, trapping him in the cage of his arms and his cock. Victor’s mind recoils as his body takes every thrust, every bruise, opening up like a thing that’s just learned to hunger for touch.

Ethan growls, paws at his nipples, then his cock - rough and impatient and as violent as Victor had first feared he would be. And yet he stops fighting, letting go, permitting whatever brutality Ethan decides to deliver upon his body because to surrender is to survive.

And it’s only when he’s let go this way, when he’s gone soft and pliant and whimpering under Ethan, that he feels the bliss swelling up in his belly. Familiar, he thinks, but again _wrong_ \- 

\- and then _right_ , blood cresting in his veins, warmth spilling out from the depths of him, from some hidden place that’s wet and hot and so good, too good.

Ethan has stopped asking if he’s okay, has probably stopped caring in the pursuit of his own relief. The power behind each thrust pushes Victor up the mattress, against the headboard that bangs the wall and stirs dust in the vent near the ceiling. And each snap of Ethan’s hips punches a breath out of Victor, a desperate little noise that shames him as much as the act itself, because in spite of the violence, in spite of the sweat and fluids and wrongness between their bodies, Victor gives in to the vile, animal pleasure that erupts at the base of spine and shoots outwards to every nerve ending in his body.

A moment of weightlessness, of blindness, and then he’s coming back to himself - feeling the warm, wet spot on the bed beneath him, the terrible ache where Ethan’s rhythm stutters, then halts - a new heat suddenly filling his body like a sickness in reverse, and Victor just moans as Ethan collapses on top of him, softening where he’s still buried deep.

There is a moment where neither of them moves, as their breathing slows and settles into a mirror rhythm. Victor closes his eye, turns his face into the pillow, hiding from Ethan, who has begun to touch him again. Callused palms stroking his sides, knuckles working into knotted muscles. Victor lets himself go limp, feels the anxiety he carries beneath his skin bleed out through his pores. He needs a bath.

Ethan kisses the nape of his neck, behind his ear. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Victor huffs and mutters into the pillow, “Shut the fuck up.”

Ethan laughs, softer than any touch he’s yet laid on Victor, and at last rolls away, onto his back. But he doesn’t let go - hauls Victor up by his hips so that he straddles Ethan’s waist, looking down at him.

Victor’s still weak, his head silly cloudy - he braces his hands on Ethan’s chest to steady himself, to correct his balance. The sun has fully risen, now, light slotting through the window panes, warming Victor’s shoulders and the rounded planes of Ethan’s face as it gentles into a smile.

“I got you dirty.” Ethan strokes Victor’s hips, his lower back, thumbs rubbing circles in the sweat and blood and come drying on his belly. “Debauchery looks good on you; you should try it more often.”

Victor rolls his eyes, searching for a suitably scathing retort, but then he catches a glimpse of something pale, a flash of orange behind the vent - the creature, retreating back into the darkness of the attic vent.

The tension returns two-fold to his limbs - his teeth ache with the clench of his jaw, and every place Ethan touches him goes cold and clammy. It happens so fast, he can’t hide the change from Ethan, whose brow furrows in renewed concern. “What is it?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”

But Victor can’t answer, and he has to look away because that’s fear on Ethan’s face, fear that Victor might cast him aside, might yet punish him for some unknown transgression. As though it were Ethan who had taken Victor’s lover away, who planned to use her and her love for selfish revenge.

He feels sick - scrambles back off Ethan, out of the sunlight. He’s stumbling into his trousers, almost falling through the door and into the sitting room. The place is still a disaster, but he finds his kit, with its little vials and syringe and the tourniquet that has learned the shape of his arm.

He’s running low - will need to acquire more, soon - wonders briefly what he might do if a larger quantity were available to him in this moment.

It’s routine, now - the preparation of the syringe, the tightening of the leather around his bicep, raising veins he could find with his eyes closed. And when it’s done he nearly drops the syringe, the drug coming over him in waves, letting him sink, letting him disappear. His head and his eyes roll back and he moans, knows he needs to loosen the tourniquet but the relief is so complete his body has already slipped away from him.

But he feels the leather unwind like a memory, the syringe taken from his fingers, his sweat-dampened hair brushed back off of his brow. And it takes him a moment to realize he’s being lifted - that the arms cradling him belong to Ethan, and he’s whispering sweet sympathies in Victor’s ear as he carries him back to bed.

Victor tries to squirm away when Ethan settles beside him, pulling the blankets up to cover them both before folding his body around Victor. And Victor wants to scream, wants to thrash and kick and strike Ethan in his foolish, kind face because he should _hate_ Victor, he should _curse_ him.

But Ethan just shushes him and uses one of his big, stupid hands to tuck Victor’s head beneath his chin, against his neck. And whatever fight might have been left in Victor lies down in surrender, because Ethan’s body is warm and he smells human and _alive_ and _right_. Victor closes his eyes again, and he lets Ethan hold him, and soothe him though he was the one who had come to Victor in search of comfort.

And sleep finally takes him, with Ethan’s arms around him and Ethan’s fingers massaging circles into the small of his back because he doesn’t hate Victor, not yet.

But he will.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If cleanliness is next to godliness, then what does that make Victor Frankenstein?

The sun has completed more than half its daily journey across the sky by the time Victor awakens. He aches all over, in his deep muscles, in his bones - his neck and chest are sweaty, and his thighs stick together where one lies atop the other. He doesn’t open his eyes, not yet - feels too feverish and dizzy to do more than press his chapped lips together.

“Thought you might not wake up, for a while there.”

Ethan’s voice is barely a whisper, but it’s close enough to make Victor flinch. He wouldn’t have ventured to hope that the American would leave him alone, but Ethan’s weight on the mattress behind him and his arm looped around Victor’s waist still make him groan. Why couldn’t Ethan have just _gone?_ His body heats the bed to nearly intolerable temperatures, and the smell of them, of their sweat and their sex, drives the oxygen from room.

And yet Victor makes no move to pull away - allows Ethan to hug him tighter, drawing shoulders and hips together. And Ethan is kissing him - the side of his neck and the triangle of his trapezius - and he’s rubbing his cock between Victor’s thighs, and it’s not just sweat that eases his way, anymore.

And Victor allows it - allow himself to catalogue the sensations, confining yet comforting, sticky but slippery. He sucks in a breath, grabs at Ethan’s hand on his chest - pushes it down over his belly, past his navel to his own cock where it’s erect and eager.

“Fuck,” Ethan rasps, and then he’s thrusting harder between Victor’s thighs, and wrapping his hand around Victor’s cock, and pulling, and stroking.

Victor can’t stop the noise that escapes his lips, like a whore in an alley or a mother trying not to wake her children. He has never felt so dirty, not when he’s up to his elbows in rotting flesh, old blood congealed on his clothes and his skin; not when he’s walking home at night with the London rain and soot clumping on his eyelashes and in his nostrils.

And he has never felt so alive, never truly understood the full glory of that which he has sacrificed so much to recreate. He moves with Ethan, rolling his hips, panting and whining and reaching back to grab a hunk of Ethan’s hair even as he strains into the other man’s hand. When he comes, he doesn’t hold back and he doesn’t hide his face - he tips his head back onto Ethan’s shoulder and sobs, tears pouring hot and free from his eyes.

It’s Ethan who muffles the sound of his own pleasure, this time with teeth gritted against Victor’s neck. And when the moment has passed, he stays that way, still holding on, his heart beating so fast and so hard Victor can feel it through his back.

The fresh sweat and come are already cooling between them. Victor squirms, but Ethan doesn’t take the hint. And then he’s whispering in Victor’s ear, soft and confessional, “Was it me? Did I hurt you?”

Victor huffs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ethan’s fingertips trace an overused vein on the inside of Victor’s arm. “How long have you been doing this to yourself?”

“How long have you been poisoning your liver?” Victor snaps. He struggles to free himself from Ethan’s arms. “Let me go.”

“Not until we talk about this.”

Victor stops fighting, but every muscle’s tight and aching like a spring too long unsprung. “You want to talk?” he spits. “Fine. We can start with how many people you killed last night before you came here and fucked me like an animal.”

It does the trick - Ethan jerks away from the acid splash of Victor’s words, and Victor jumps at the opportunity to scramble out of that hateful, narrow bed.

The cold of the floor stings the soles of his bare feet. Victor finds his shirt, but his trousers have been lost somewhere during the strange, grey morning. He will need a clean pair, anyway - even the shirt on his back makes his skin crawl.

Ethan sits up in bed, watches him with a frown that suggests fury in need of forgiveness. “Where are you going?” he asks as Victor opens the door. There is a dry fear at the back of his throat.

“To draw a bath,” Victor says, neither an invitation to stay nor a command to go. _Let the bastard American do as he wants,_ Victor thinks as he leaves the bedroom behind and crosses his little flat to the washroom. 

He knows better than to think he can hold Ethan’s leash - they’re both dogs in their own ways, snapping and growling at each other in their too-small kennel until Sir Malcolm has a need for them, or Miss Ives offers a touch that is not kind, but gentle enough to be a comfort.

In the washroom he turns the radiator on, enduring the explosive banging in the walls ( _like gunshots,_ he thinks) and the fine plaster dust it knocks loose as pockets of air pass through the pipes. But there’s heat - a luxury he does not allow himself often - and hot water when he turns the rust and lime-scaled handles above the tub.

It doesn’t hold water well, and the porcelain veneer has worn away over time, leaving more metal exposed than Victor cares to think about. It had proved too small to be useful in his laboratory, but it serves his own needs sufficiently. 

He doesn’t allow himself to enjoy the steaming water as it folds around his soiled body and loosens his aching muscles, all too conscious of the fleeting nature of its pleasure. Victor washes quickly, where he feels dirtiest - between his legs, across his belly and around his neck. He scrubs his skin raw, pink and tingling and new, skin that has not been touched by Ethan Chandler or Victor’s own shame.

And then, as though summoned by Victor’s heated thoughts, Ethan stands above him, shirt unbuttoned, cock hanging soft between his legs.

The smell of him touches something primal in Victor, something hungry. Sex and sweat and blood – both Ethan’s and his own, marking the larger man’s body with an unmistakable ferocity. Everyone will know to whom he belongs.

Ethan doesn’t ask and Victor doesn’t exactly offer, but he does draw his knees up to his chest, making room for Ethan to join him in the still warm water. It sloshes dangerously close to the edge of the tub as it’s displaced by Ethan’s bulk. 

Victor moves quickly, efficiently – scrubbing at Ethan’s back, under his arms, around his nails and up the insides of his thighs. He tries not to think of Brona, lying in her bed of ice, or of the creature, yellow eyes unreadable as they had observed their creator’s body bent and bowed and _stained_. Victor sucks in an unsteady breath – drops his head to Ethan’s shoulder, presses his face into the slope of his neck, tasting the moisture gathered on his skin.

Ethan shushes him, strokes the back of his neck, but it only makes Victor choke back a sob. It was fear that made him abandon his first creation; it’s shame, now, that makes him long to flee. _What have you done?_ a voice howls in his head. _What have you done?_

“Ssh,” Ethan tries to soothe him, and now Victor is outright crying, loud and messy like he’s been holding back this despair his entire life. Ethan doesn’t make things better – he adjusts his legs and pulls Victor forward to straddle his lap, arms wrapping tight around him, kissing Victor’s forehead and his temple, the apple of his cheek and his mouth –

“Stop,” Victor gasps, but doesn’t pull away. He feels Ethan’s cock hardening against his own, and damn him, his body responds. “What have you done to me?”

“I could ask you the same,” Ethan says, “but you’d just sass me until I gotta kiss you again just to make you shut up.” He knits his fingers together at the nape of Victor’s neck, wipes the tears from his cheeks with his thumbs. “Come on, water’s getting cold.”

And then he’s standing, and Victor tries to get his own legs under him, but Ethan keeps a firm hold on him so that Victor has no choice but to wrap his arms around Ethan’s neck and his legs around his waist and trust that Ethan won’t let him fall.

After the nightmares they’ve shared, he shouldn’t be surprised by how easily it comes to him.

“I suppose you’ll need to lay low for a while,” Victor says as they dress.

Ethan scrapes a bit of dried blood off his coat. “Probably a good idea.”

“You can’t stay here.” Victor immediately regrets his tone. “I didn’t mean it like that…”

“I forced your door,” Ethan cuts him off. “Someone had to have seen or heard…something.”

Blood heats Victor’s face – he turns away to button his waistcoat. “Go to Sir Malcolm’s,” he says. “Even if someone sees you, the police wouldn’t dare insult him with an inquiry.”

Ethan huffs. “What about you?”

Victor shrugs at the mess in his sitting room. “I’ll say you were looking for narcotics.”

Ethan touches his elbow, coaxes Victor to face him, to accept the gentle kiss he offers. “You’ll come too?” he asks. “Tonight?”

Victor can’t help but laugh against Ethan’s lips and the tickle of his moustache. “It’s already afternoon,” he protests, “and I have my work…”

“Tomorrow, then?”

Victor sighs. “Tomorrow evening.”

Ethan grins and kisses him again, quick and hard and full of such energy it’s no wonder ladies and gentlemen fall so easily for his charm. “I’ll see you then,” he says.

Victor cringes a little as Ethan shrugs into his stained coat. “Be careful.”

Ethan pauses at the door, jiggles the broken latch and winks. “You, too.”

And then he’s gone, and Victor shouldn’t laugh, but he does – drops into a chair and hides his face in his hands and laughs and laughs and he hears his own voice crying out in his head, _What have you done?_


End file.
